Wednesday, February 12, 2014

Boston Globe on the Good Ship Lollipop

Which also reminds me, I need to cut down on the Globe.... 

"Much to applaud in Shirley Temple, then and now; Beloved child star of ’30s dead at 85" by Ty Burr |  Globe Staff, February 12, 2014

During the prime of her then-unprecedented stardom, from age 6 to 11, Shirley Temple was a living example to all the little girls (and boys) of how to move through the world: with effervescence, good cheer, a song on the lips, and a tap dance in the toes.

**************

Even the Great Depression seemed to buckle before her steel-belted optimism.

From a modern vantage point, though, with the announcement of Shirley Temple Black’s death Monday at 85, she represents a different example: a lesson in how to be famous while retaining one’s sanity, humanity, and perspective. This matters very much in a culture in which public attention, more than ever, is a cheap commodity easily obtained and to which our celebrated children respond by flipping out....

Then why does the price of my newspaper keep going up?

RelatedGlobe Gave Me Touch of Affluenza

Also see‘Affluenza’ teen gets no jail for fatal car wreck

The family is paying for pricey rehab in California. I suppose that's puni$hment enough.

Temple chain-smoked in her late teens and, at 17, married the first man who came along; that appears to be as rebellious as she got....

Related: Time to Quit Smoking the Boston Globe 

I am cutting down, yeah.

Times were different then, and the great film factories kept their talent on a short leash while working them hard....

She was and remains as iconic as Charlie Chaplin and Mickey Mouse, two other early movie stars who quickly became the property of the public imagination and who roll on in the culture.

When people heard she’d died, many were probably surprised that she was still alive, because the woman herself, with all her diplomatic accomplishments — she served as ambassador to Ghana in the 1970s and Czechoslovakia during the Velvet Revolution of 1989 — and high-profile Republican fund-raising activities, had long ago receded....

I was one, and she was a Republican? That good little girl? A Republican?

Like Chaplin and Mickey Mouse, she possessed vast monetary value. Temple’s fortunes dictated those of her employer, Twentieth Century Fox, and the profits quite literally saved the studio from going under in the early 1930s....

And she was paid chump change for it!

--more--"

"Shirley Temple Black, 85, America’s sweetheart" by Aljean Harmetz |  New York Times, February 12, 2014

NEW YORK — In 1967 she ran for Congress....

She lost to a more moderate Republican, Pete McCloskey. It probably did not help bands kept playing “On the Good Ship Lollipop” at campaign stops.

OMG, she was Tea Party before there was Tea Party.

In 1969, Nixon appointed her to the five-member US delegation to the UN General Assembly. She acquitted herself well by all accounts, speaking out about the plight of refugees and environmental problems.

When she was appointed ambassador to Ghana in 1974, some career diplomats were outraged, but State Department officials later said her performance was outstanding.

When she arrived in Prague as ambassador, she discovered there had been a Shirley Temple fan club there 50 years before. Officials brought “Shirleyka” membership cards to autograph.

She succeeded beyond expectations, winning praise during her three years in Prague from, among others, Henry Kissinger, who called her “very intelligent, very tough-minded, very disciplined.”

Not exactly a ringing eulogy, is it? A war criminal is given the quote?

Although she may always be best remembered as America’s sweetheart, the woman who left the screen at 22 saying she had “had enough of pretend” ended up leaving a considerable mark on the real world.

Me, too, and that's all that is left. Everything I read and see in the AmeriKan ma$$ media is exactly that.

--more--" 

The 21st-century Shirley Temple?

UPDATE: SHIRLEY TEMPLE - MIND CONTROLLED BY THE CIA